Add new utility function, reap_children(), to test_support. This should

be called at the end of each test that spawns children (perhaps it
should be called from regrtest instead?).  This will hopefully prevent
some of the unexplained failures in the buildbots (hppa and alpha)
during tests that spawn children.  The problems were not reproducible.
There were many zombies that remained at the end of several tests.
In the worst case, this shouldn't cause any more problems,
though it may not help either.  Time will tell.

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/Lib/test/test_wait4.py b/Lib/test/test_wait4.py
index 027e5c3524..711fd2dc38 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_wait4.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_wait4.py
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 
 import os
 from test.fork_wait import ForkWait
-from test.test_support import TestSkipped, run_unittest
+from test.test_support import TestSkipped, run_unittest, reap_children
 
 try:
     os.fork
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@ class Wait4Test(ForkWait):
 
 def test_main():
     run_unittest(Wait4Test)
+    reap_children()
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     test_main()